VSCode as an alternative to MonoDevelop for Unity

Ever since I can remember Unity comes with a tweaked version of MonoDevelop to help you produce your code magic and it’s truely not satisfying to work with. But there is an alternative named VSCode that is working on Windows & Mac alike. And you are about to read about it right now.

Ah, MonoDevelop. It was a burden I was willing to take on because I got used to it and there were no good alternatives for me when working with Unity. It was running slowly, the code formatting has never really worked for me. In fact it was driving me insane. Even though I tried my best to set it all up to meet my needs, it still felt broken. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I’m too impatient/incompetent. But maybe not. Looking at the amount of complaints about this editor I am not the only one out there.

Yes sure. Visual Studio is the way to go. But as we all know it doesn’t run on OS X. And what should you do, if you switch your working environment frequently? I work on a Windows PC and a Macbook Air. Sublime comes to mind. Great editor. But then again I’m to lazy (stupid) to do the bridging with Unity. But then I recently stumbled across VSCode from Microsoft. It looks like a Sublime version of Visual Studio with their logo on it. Ok, just another windows-only editor from Microsoft? Nope.

Let’s see:

It’s free – Check

It is working on Windows and OS X – Check

It formates the code exactly as I like it – Check

It’s fast and responsive. Even on my aging laptop. – Check

The syntax highlighting is good. I would like my class names colored, too. But anyway: Check

And: there is an easy to integrate bridge to Unity – Oh yeah!

Bring together Unity & VSCode

To integrate VSCode in Unity you first download VSCode and install it.

You then go visit Github and download the Unity Visual Studio Code Integration from dotBunny. Import these files in your Unity project. It’s important to put place them under an Editor folder in your project. Once you’ve done that, navigate to the Unity Preferences and select VSCode. Check the Enable Integration option. That’s it. You’re good. Enjoy your new code editor. 🙂

For the most part, VSCode is great, but the lack of proper code highlighting makes it a no-go for me. The large majority of the code is not properly coloured which makes the code very hard to read.
Hope they can improve that in the next releases because besides that it’s an amazing replacement for the old and sluggish MonoDevelop.

None of the .cs files in my project show any code highlighting. I’m able to select Color Themes, and I see the background and text color change. However, there is no code highlighting, all the code is the same color. Any tips?